


Untitled, flesh and bones, 1994 (artist unknown)

by groove_bunker



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Beca's POV, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 19:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5139272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/groove_bunker/pseuds/groove_bunker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living with Chloe Beale is kind of like living in an art gallery</p><p>[Beca learns to break rules she's never really understood]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled, flesh and bones, 1994 (artist unknown)

Living with Chloe Beale is kind of like living in an art gallery.

It’s not that it’s quiet or anything, Chloe is literally incapable of being anything but loud. And it’s not all white walls and sterile air, because Beca doesn’t like white anything and she’s always felt like a home should be lived in, not like her father’s place, where Sheila has taken the life out of everything.

It’s more about the little signs that aren’t there, but that Beca swears she can see every time Chloe’s within three feet of her. The ones which say ‘please do not touch the artworks’. Because whenever Chloe is in her personal bubble, all she wants to do is reach out and touch. And because Chloe Beale is the closest thing Beca’s ever seen to an actual work of art.

Some days, she reckons Chloe knows about those signs and that she wants Beca to throw away all of the known rules of the universe that relate to friendship and best friends. There are rules, she knows this, even if she’s never really understood them. They normally involve not wanting to kiss your best friend every time she’s anywhere near you. She understands that at least. But Chloe either didn’t ever read the rules or she tore them up, just another insignificant social convention she didn’t need. She’s always in Beca’s space, unless Beca has to use the bathroom and even then they end up conversing through the bathroom door. Beca wants to hate it.

Beca loves it, the same way she loves everything Chloe does.

She’s never sure when knowing Chloe Beale turned into tolerating Chloe Beale, and when tolerating Chloe turned into liking her, and when it just became loving Chloe Beale, loving everything she is and does. Everything with Chloe seems to happen all at once, and once upon a time, she would have hated that. Change was never something she’d been particularly comfortable with. But with Chloe, it was different. Chloe seemed to have rewritten her emotional DNA, as if that was even a thing, and made her into something that she would not have recognised had she bumped into present Beca on her first day at Barden.

She guesses she could hate it more.

She wonders if the other people who stream through the apartment see the signs, because none of them reach out and touch Chloe either. Then again, Chloe doesn’t invade their personal space in the same way that she constantly occupies Beca’s, assaulting her senses constantly. Which is another reason that Beca thinks that Chloe’s the only other person who enters their apartment who sees the signs, those signs which tell her not to touch the artwork. And then, Chloe being Chloe, she takes those signs and laughs at them, laughs in the faces of anyone who’s ever made one. It’s not just the proximity. It’s the way she looks when they’re just them. Even in sweats, she looks like the Venus de Milo, only with more limbs. It’s like she seems to put in extra effort when they’re going to be alone and Beca’s not stupid, she knows deep down what it means, but there are all those rules. They’re roommates and friends and while it’s not some sacred bond like Aubrey would probably have them believe, it’s still more than she’s willing to gamble on a kiss, a touch, one night in bed together.

When Chloe rips the rules up once again and leans over to kiss Beca one night after having a few too many drinks, flashing lights and alarms go off over the little signs. It feels like she’s thrown herself onto an electric fence, the one separating her from Chloe, the one which is there for the safety of their friendship and for her own personal health, given her reaction to Chloe’s lips on hers. Her heart rate quickens and her mouth is dry; how is kissing someone actually good for your continued life, she wonders. When they break apart, she still feels like her fingers are gripped around the wires, the current is still flowing through her with nothing to ground it. She wants so desperately to let go, to fall back and look at the mess she has made, but she can’t. She’s lost in the way that Chloe’s looking at her, lost in the memory of their lips pressed together, lost in the way she feels so much all at once. Beca is lost and for the first time ever, she kind of likes it.

The alarms never stop ringing. From the minute they kiss, Beca can’t stop getting in Chloe’s personal space, hoping for another one and praying that Chloe’s self-control is stronger than hers. It is, for the most part. There’s more touching than usual, than before, just soft touches to places that friends don’t touch. But there is no more kissing, and Beca begins to think that maybe Chloe does understand the rules, not all the time, and not always when they’re entirely necessary, but sometimes, she does see the same signs and flashing lights that Beca can’t stop seeing when they’re together.

They fight it for so long that Beca learns to drown out the blaring in her ears and the blinding lights, because now when she’s with Chloe, all she knows is that the sexual tension is becoming painful, not only for them but for anyone else who’s unfortunate enough to have to be in a room with them for any length of time. And then suddenly, they both snap one day, while chopping vegetables to make soup and Beca almost loses her pinky toe when Chloe drops the knife. But then she’s pressed against the counter top and Chloe’s hands are all over her, and fuck the alarm bells because this, this is beautiful and perfect and kissing Chloe makes her feel like she’s something for the first time ever.

The alarms get switched off after that, and the signs get taken down.

After all, there’s nothing wrong with one work of art touching another.


End file.
